Secularization Problem Karl Löwith and Hans Blumenberg debate on the Legitimacy of the Modern Age

Extended Abstract
 Introduction
 Two of the most important philosophers who rejected the originality of modernity from a theological perspective, Karl Schmidt and Karl Levitt, benefited from the concept of secularisation in their critique. In political theology, Schmitt saw all the concepts of modern state theory as secular versions of theological concepts, and in the sense of history, Levitt saw the philosophy of progress and thus modernity as a grounded narrative of Christian-Jewish eschatology. Hans Blumenberg, first at the Montser Conference and then in a more extended way in The Legitimacy of Modernity, made the concept of secularisation the target of the most severe attacks and considered Levitt's book to have had a "condemnatory effect" on the German intellectual atmosphere of the second half of the 20th century - and especially the 1950s. In a paradoxical way, Blumenberg both defended modernity as an absolutely new beginning in history and saw the philosophy of modern progress as an attempt to answer an essentially theological problem - and in his own words a "residual" problem - that modernity would eventually lose. from that decade onwards, secularisation has generally been regarded as a concept used only in the critique and negation of modernity. To understand Levitt and Blumenberg's discussion, it is necessary to understand these different aspects and Levitt's powerful metaphorical use of it. In this article we will first try to provide some historical background to the concept of secularisation, then explain Levitt's secularisation thesis and Blumenberg's critique, and finally, by extending some of the views of Robert Pippin and Elizabeth Brint, raise critical considerations about the basis of Blumenberg's critique.
Methodology
This article uses a descriptive, analytical and inferential approach to examine the issue of secularization: the dispute between Karl Levitt and Hans Blumenberg over the legitimacy of modernity. The article will first provide a historical background to the concept of secularization, then explain Levitt's secularization thesis and Blumenberg's critique, and finally, by extending some of the views of Robert Pippin and Elizabeth Brint, raise critical considerations about the basis of Blumenberg's critique.
 Findings
two main findings of the article are the following:
1 unsurpassiblity of Tradition in west
 As we will see, both the critics of the modern age, löwith and Schmidt, and the sole defender of the atuthencity of modernity, Hans Blumnbebrg, admit that the elemnts of the western tradition, Greco-Roman and Judaic-Christian ones, can not be surpassed. For example, even Blumenberg claims the modernity becomes unthinkable wihouth Chtirsitniaty.
2 locality of the legitimacy debate
Following the first finding, if the elements of wsetern tradition are unsurpassable, so logically no universal claim can be made regarding the legtitimacy and the nuances of this debate are restricted to the western world and can have no realtion with e.g Islamic world.
Ananlysis
Modern age is not an epoch in the strict sense, but a botched construct of reason and faith. First in Müntser Congress and the in an expanded way in the Legitimacy of the Modern Age, Hans Blumenberg attacked the secularization concept in the most severe way and remarked the Löwith's work has had a "dogmatizing effect" on the German intellectual milieu in the second half of the twentieth century and particularly of the 1950s.
As has been said, Blumenberg considered the core of the secularisation thesis to be the negation of modernity's originality and self-righteousness. Thus, he made every effort to establish modernity's break with previous ages and to confirm its independence. On the other hand, he wanted to provide an explanation of modernity that would lead to the criticism of the historicists. They argued that no epoch could stand apart from context and time, and that the modern claim to be an absolute beginning in history, with no connection to the past, was a false and mistaken claim. Blumenberg accepted this criticism to some extent, seeing the lack of attention to historicity as one of the defects of modernity, which, according to the popular explanation, stems from Descartes' desire to break free from time and place and to prove the universal truths of mathematics. Blumenberg's clever response to the historicists was to leave their critique half-baked and use it only to reject modernity.
Concussion
 Bulmenberg defends modernity as a quasi-absolute beginning in history and at the same time treats the philosophy of progress as an effort to answer the authentically theological –and in his own terms as a residue- question which will finally be abandoned by modernity. Following a phenomenological method, which is more devoted to Husserl instead of Heidegger, Blumenberg refused all versions of the secularization thesis as crypto-Platonic statements on modernity which presupposes some transcendent substance and treats all the subsequent forms as the pale copies of it, and therefore divesting all the other ages of authenticity. From the phenomenological-historical standpoint of Blumenberg, neither modernity nor christianity enjoys that so-called zero point of departure. He shows that even the allegedly properties of christianity, e.g. providence, is in fact borrowed ones from stoicism in the almost forgotten formative periods of christianity and presented from the middle ages on as the revelatory cache of christianity to create a façade of a-historicality. Moreover, Blumenbergs suggests that this transcendent substance is not available to theory and hence is an article of faith which cannot be properly examined in a scholarly way. And because of this unavailability, scholarly surveys have already been brought up to close.